Macross: Shooting Insight

Despite there being more than fifty Macross games released over the last four decades, none of them have made their way to the United States. That is, until now. Coming 43 years after Super Dimension Fortress Macross first debuted in Japan, gamers around the world now have the opportunity to play Macross: Shooting Insight, an old school shoot ‘em up that has you fighting enemies with both a horizontal and vertical perspective. That’s a cool gimmick, but the question remains: Will this be the game that introduces a whole new audience to the wonderful world of Macross? That’s what we’re going to uncover when I review Macross: Shooting Insight.

It’s probably worth mentioning right up front that I don’t have a whole lot of experience with Macross, either as an anime or a game series. Like a lot of people my age, I’m more familiar with the Americanized version, Robotech, but outside of that, I have a very rudimentary knowledge of Macross. Thankfully, I’m a quick study and I don’t mind getting dropped in the middle of a story and needing to catch up, especially if the shoot ‘em up gameplay is fun. And I’m not alone, as I suspect there will be a lot of gamers who are introduced to the science fiction story of Macross through this game.

The good news is that once I heard that Shooting Insight involved a mysterious woman trying to harness the hidden power of music and both pilots and songstresses are finding themselves transported through space and time, I was intrigued. I may not know who these characters are or how any of this works, but I love shooting down spaceships, mechs and pretty much anything else that gets in my way. Bring on the epic space battles!

Now, when I talk about the narrative, I’m actually talking about several different stories that follow each of the famous pilots from the anime. The game attempts this trick where it brings a bunch of fan-favorite heroes from different Macross series together to interact with each other and solve a very video game-y problem. Fans of the show may be enthralled by seeing one character interact with somebody from a completely different part of the timeline, but I found these intertwining stories to be dreadful dull. We’ll get more into that in a bit.

If you’ve played a space shoot ‘em up before, then you’re going to have no problem getting into Macross. It’s a fairly straight-forward action game where we use one button to shoot and another to roll away from enemy shots. The most interesting gameplay element is a radar you control with the right analog stick that will allow the pilot to target enemies and shoot out homing missiles. And if things get really bad, you can always press a button that calls for a support strike that will take out most enemy fire and rip into the bad guy’s ships. It’s all pretty standard stuff.

Instead of picking up different weapons mid-level, like most shooters, you’re stuck with whatever weapon is assigned to the ship you’re piloting. Each of the different characters have their own transforming ships, so you’ll be selecting between a spread shot, a laser attack, sustained fire and more. You’ll upgrade the effectiveness of this attack by picking up floating items and filling up the power gauge, though the weapons don’t visually change much as they get stronger. It’s also worth mentioning that the ships have different stats, making some stronger or faster or more able to roll away from enemy fire.

If you’ve heard anything about Shooting Insight, it’s probably that the game is both a horizontal and vertical shooter. The marketing of the game is quick to make it sound like Macross offers the best of both worlds, where the perspective will sometimes be side-scrolling and sometimes overhead. Of course, if you’re a long-time fan of shooters, then you likely already know that this is far from the first game to try something like this. Konami’s critically-acclaimed action game Axelay switched between the two perspectives all the way back in 1992, and there have been plenty of recent shooters that have made the switch on the fly, similar to Macross.

Now, to be fair to Shooting Insight, the camera does occasionally switch to a behind-the-ship view that reminds me a bit of Star Fox. There are also overhead bits that turn the game into a dual-stick shooter, allowing you to quickly shoot the enemies around you, no matter where they are. I generally like variety, but these two sections feel more like undercooked mini-games when compared to the vertical and horizontal bits.

That’s not to say that the traditional shoot ‘em up stages are all that great, because Macross is definitely not one of the genre’s top tier titles. Don’t get me wrong, there’s fun to be had here, but there’s nothing here that is going to wow you. That includes the surprisingly limp boss fights, which neither look cool nor put up much of a fight. These not only pale in comparison to recent shooters like CYGNI: All Guns Blazing, but also old school action games from the early 1990s. None of these bosses are as memorable as even the worst baddies in Gaiares or Thunder Force III.

Since we’re already comparing Macross to the old school greats, I’ll take this moment to mention that the backgrounds are just as bland as the gameplay. Half the stages feel like they are happening in front of the same boring chunk of space, and even when we finally fly through a cave or get close to a planet, the backgrounds aren’t any more impressive. The graphics and stages lack any kind of style, and I wouldn’t even know the game was connected to a popular anime if not for the cinemas. Speaking of which ...

Maybe it’s because of its anime roots, but Macross is extremely chatty. The story mode has lengthy conversations before each level, after each level and even right before they battle one of the many underwhelming bosses. What’s frustrating is that the conversations will bleed into the gameplay bits, where the player is focused on shooting down bad guys. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with a little mid-level chatter; this kind of thing has been done effectively in plenty of other action games. The problem is that, much like everything else in the game, all of the conversations are in Japanese. That means that unless you understand the language, you’re probably going to have to read the tiny subtitles hidden away on the bottom right side of the screen. In other words, to keep up with the story, you’re going to need to split your attention between dodging bullet hell patterns and reading subtitles, which is a terrible combination.

Of course, the real flaw here is that this game does a bad job of introducing a new audience to the world of Macross. I may not be an expert when it comes to the anime, but I know enough to know that the original story is a lot more compelling than what is presented here. There’s a level of importance and urgency that is missing in this game, and you never really get to know any of these characters, despite what feels like non-stop chatter. There’s no reason why Macross can’t break into the mainstream outside of Japan, but it’s going to require a better game than Shooting Insight to make that happen.